Portable External Hard Drive Question

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Wingman

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I am currently using two portable external hard drives with my HP desktop computer. One of the drives is a back-up drive that stores my system image. I do not have access to any of my personal files on this drive. The other drive is an expansion drive where I store all of my personal files and I am able to access the files. I am considering upgrading to portable external drives that are USB 3.0.
1. Do I need two portable external hard drives, or can one drive store both my system image and also let me also store my personal files separately, so that I can have access to them?
2. If I can use just one drive, it will need about 500GB. I would appreciate any recommendations on what brand and model to buy.

Thank you for your time and knowledge.
 
1. Depends on how that system image is stored, but it should be doable on the same drive. You may have to create a separate partition for it on the new drive...

2. I recently picked up a 2TB Western Digital My Passport Ultra. Also have a 1TB Samsung. Both seem fast enough on USB 3.0. No complaints with either.
 
One drive can do it. IIRC you can even partition the external drive and in effect create two hard drives.
 
I'm using a Seagate 2TB for my back up and a Passport 1TB for wifes. I'd just get a 1TB and partition. Cheap enough now.
 
Late to the party here, but I like two drives in this case. If the one external drive fails, you lose all of your personal files, as it looks like you don't store them on your internal drive, but on your external drive only.

Drive #1: keep your system image on it and re-image once every 3 or 6 months, whatever you feel comfortable with. Keep this drive stored separate from your computer, and in your personal fire safe if you have one. A backup does you little good if the computer is stolen or caught in a fire/flood if the backup is sitting right next to the computer.

Drive #2: use this as your daily access drive. You can partition this into two if you like, one for daily use, and one for incremental backup for file recovery if you mess something up.

I strongly recommend keeping a second drive in a second location. Some friends of ours learned this the hard way recently. They had a smash-and-grab in their home office about a week ago and the computer was stolen, in addition to everything attached to it. They had no separate backup, so they lost everything they had (pictures, home movies, etc).
 
I am late to the Show here too!
With my former Windows XP, I had Norton Ghost, which is no longer available. But it was the simplest to use and I want something similar as a replacement for my news Windows 8.1 machine.

When I loaded the Norton Ghost software back then, I had nothing else to do but press a button that copied my entire hard drive. I was never asked to drag and drop anything into different areas of the backup drive.

That's what I desire to purchase again. Are any of these new external drives capable of such easy transfer of ALL MY FILES.... my entire computer backed-up, with one push of a button?..... under $150?
 
Originally Posted By: Triple_Se7en
That's what I desire to purchase again. Are any of these new external drives capable of such easy transfer of ALL MY FILES.... my entire computer backed-up, with one push of a button?..... under $150?


Macrium Reflect with whatever drive you want.
 
Well, I am back needing additional help. I need this to be more simple (for me). I need one portable external hard drive to store just my system image. I contacted Western Digital and was told that none of their portable hard drives would store a system image. I contacted Seagate and was told I would have to use additional software to store a system image. I don't do well with software unless it is very simple. So I need a:

500 gb usb 3.0 Portable External Hard Drive that will store my computer system image, allow me to update the system image on a regular basis (manually is OK), using simple software. Sorry to be so dim, but computer is not my native language. Thanks!
 
Looking at the Macrium site, the free edition does not have the "Differential and Incremental backups" feature. This is ok if you don't mind having to wait for a full copy each time, but otherwise, incremental backups are much nicer.

If you don't need incremental features, DriveImage XML is another option. I have used it successfully:
http://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm
 
Thanks, Bear. I will look at that also. Three years ago, when I bought my first back up external drive, I just plugged it in. No fuss, no bother. It suprises me that things are actually more difficult to do, three years later.
 
On that topic, has anyone used Paragon Backup & Recovery Free? I'm using it to do periodic automated backups of my system, but never actually had a need to do a full system restore out of it. Wonder if I'm in for a surprise if it ever came to that...
 
Originally Posted By: Ramblejam
Originally Posted By: Triple_Se7en
That's what I desire to purchase again. Are any of these new external drives capable of such easy transfer of ALL MY FILES.... my entire computer backed-up, with one push of a button?..... under $150?


Macrium Reflect with whatever drive you want.


I have no idea on how to store to disk. I was seeking an external hard drive that works like Norton Ghost, with no drag & drop features.
I was considering purchasing this one.
Click Free Easy Imaging
 
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